Saturday Night Live alum Al Franken is fighting to become Minnesota's next Senator, but he's far from the first person to turn celebrity into a run for office. A look at a few of his predecessors and their entertainment careers before (and in some cases, after) they became public servants

George Murphy

Don Cravens / Time Life Pictures / Getty

The Yale drop-out began his career as a song-and-dance man on Broadway in
1927  his former stage partner Shirley Temple once said he "had a
natural sense of rhythm." During the Great Depression, he headed west to
Hollywood, making his film debut in 1934. Like Ronald Reagan, he thrived in
actors' politics, serving as president of the Screen Actors' Guild in the
mid-1940s. He won an Academy Award for career achievement in 1950 and later
worked behind the scenes as vice president of the Technicolor Corporation.
In 1964, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate, becoming a champion of "visual
education"  using Technicolor's "concept" films on math, athletics and
science to educate the American youth. But he never saw this pet project
through: Murphy lost his re-election bid in 1970 after voters discovered that he still received a salary from Technicolor while serving in Congress.